


Cabin Fever

by Mandergee, RighteousNerd



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Discussion of character death, F/M, SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 EPISODE 4 "Face My Enemy", Unbelievable amounts of angst that resulted in many of the fandom crying buckets maybe, We love you Philinda Fandom and we're sorry if you need a lot of tissues, or for causing you pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2462105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandergee/pseuds/Mandergee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RighteousNerd/pseuds/RighteousNerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes protecting what you love takes precedence over anything else, even following orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cabin Fever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The Philinda Fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=The+Philinda+Fandom).



> Contains spoilers for season 2, episode 4 "Face My Enemy".
> 
> Taken from a thread that was started by a simple thought from RighteousNerd on Tumblr regarding the end of "Face My Enemy" and Melinda May's Plan.

She’d leave with him in the night, using a little two person plane she got for that purpose, and fly to Australia with him knocked out for the trip.

She’d spend the days keeping him as sane as she can when he has lucid moments, while he putters around unshaven because she keeps the sharp things locked away and has special knives for him to carve with when he needs to.

When he sleeps she talks to Simmons on a secure line, makes sure no one can trace their locations, and discusses the progress Simmons is making in finding a cure. Simmons keeps asking to bring Skye in on it, and May says no.

Some days, it’s almost like he’s the old Phil. Those are the good days, when they take walks (not too far, she can never trust how long the clarity will last) and they talk, though it’s mostly him doing the talking. He tells her he knows that she has his back, and always always he asks her to let him go.

Some days, he stares at nothing and is unresponsive. Those days she does Tai Chi and watches him from the corner of her eye.

And then there are the bad days. He’s angry and loud. His words come out scattered and his body shakes as raves about the secrets of the universe. Those days end with him carving up the walls and collapsing in a heap when he’s done. She cleans up, puts him to bed, and then calls Simmons.

She spends the nights lying in bed in her room, staring at the ceiling and thinking. He has restless nights and if his movements wake her up she reaches for an icer and waits in the dark for anything that might require her to intervene.

He usually calms down after an hour or so. When she gets up in the morning he makes breakfast if he’s clear headed, and always asks her why she looks so tired. She tells him she couldn’t sleep, and sometimes he asks her if it’s all too much for her. If she’d reconsider taking him out, because he’s not willing to drag her down with him.

She tells him she’d follow him anywhere, but that he’s going to be okay, so they’re not going to discuss it now.

They both lose weight.

Some days he lacks the focus to eat or the tremor in his hands makes it hard to put spoon to mouth. She’s long since stopped giving him forks. Her appetite wanes with his. They drink protein shakes, that look horrible and taste worse, but contain enough nutritional value to keep them going.

Her exercise regiment takes a hit. She can’t leave him alone long enough to run, and lifting weights are too dangerous to keep around.

He pads around the cabin in bare feet and baggy sweat pants. She had to remove the draw strings early on. Sometimes he reaches up to his collor, surprised that theres no tie around his neck. His t shirt hangs off his frame, and he never even notices the faded captain America logo.

"I used to be the Director of SHIELD." He says, after spending the entire day quiet. "Now what am I?"

"You’re Phil Coulson." She says instantly, as if it were the only thing that mattered.

"And you’re Melinda May." He says, his voice turning thick in the way that tells her his clarity is slipping.

"I am." She tells him, but she’s already lost his attention.

One day she comes back from picking up a supply drop less than ten minutes away- courtesy of Natasha Romaonov- and finds him sitting in the center of the living room without clothes on, idly drawing on his thigh with a sharpie. She’d thought he was asleep, and stands in the center of the open doorway with canvas bags dangling from her fingers.

He sees her and pauses, face glistening with sweat, and she drops the bags to walk over and kneel beside him, gently prying the marker out of his fingers. He hasn’t made much progress and it won’t take long to clean up, but her heart breaks a little at the way she stumbled across him. There were days long since past that she’d thought he’d get better, that she’d have the chance to make up for lost time and tell him how she felt…but those days may never come back and she knows that all she has for now is to _show_ him how she feels.

Whether he knows it or not, it’s what she has left.

She wakes one night to the sound of her door creaking open, only to find him swaying on his feet. He’s never been in her room, never shown any interest and a long forgotten hope flickers briefly in her chest. And then she remembers.

"Melinda?" He asks.

"I’m here." She answers.

He lays next to her in the dark. His head resting on her stomach, her fingers combing through his hair. It’s longer now than she’s ever seen it. She can’t risk the scissors.

"You have to end this." He begs. They both know she won't.

After that the lucid moments slowly disappear, until one day they stop coming altogether.

She still can’t bring herself to do it, though, and wonders when she’s going to find the strength to. It can’t go on forever, as his hair thins and the remaining brown slowly goes grey from stress. They aren’t young anymore- haven’t reached the point of brittle bones and the need for bifocals- and she wonders how she’d ever manage to give him what he needs for old age if he needs to be sheltered from most of the world and the world needs to be sheltered from him.

Her mother finally says something when she calls, hears Coulson in the background scraping violently at the walls and asks Melinda how much room they have left. How many walls can she replace before she’s too exhausted to go on, and how much sleep can she manage to get before she doesn’t wake up at all because he’s attacked her in her sleep? She worries about her daughter because Melinda can’t worry about anyone but Coulson anymore, and she brings up the fact that he’d asked her to watch over S.H.I.E.L.D- not watch over _him_. To forge ahead and create a world with Skye and the others that will keep society safe. He wouldn’t want to know she was there with him forever, and he wouldn’t want her to die in the middle of the Australian outback alone- because he isn’t really there anymore. He hasn’t been there for a long time.

The first time she picks up the gun, her hands shake so badly she wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger if she tried.

It’s gotten worse. So much worse than she could have imagined. He can’t hold a knife to carve, and the last time she repaired the wall left him screaming.

He sits in front of the symbols now, tracing them with trembling fingers, muttering words that aren’t words. All the time. When she touches him, he curls in on himself as if her fingers burn him.

She loads the gun and unloads it. Then later loads it again.

How can she? How can she not?

He doesn’t notice her standing behind him, and she thinks that might be a mercy. She could never do this and see his eyes, even as clouded as they are.

How did they get here? How did it get this bad?

She switches off the safety and cocks the hammer back.

Her phone rings.

   It’s Simmons, and her heart jumps into her throat as she reaches for the gun she left on the table when she picked up the phone. Puts the safety back on and stares at it as the rushed voice on the other end tells her they might have something. That they _do_ have something, and not only will it bring him back from the madness, but it will erase any memory he has of the moments after the lucid time had passed.

    May is worried that it will do the same thing again, eventually- give him more questions than answers, and Simmons is ready for that. She rattles off the origins of her cure in terms that May can understand with her limited scientific knowledge, none of it involving alien biology or unpredictable elements. They’ll need to come out of hiding now- and she’ll need to find the keys to the plane.

She hangs up the phone and weeps.

She cries for him and for himself. For the nights when she despaired at not being able to save him. For the lost days when they could have had each other instead of a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Deep, soul rattling tears, that leave her exhausted and spent.

She turns to Phil, startled to find him watching her. He hasn’t looked at her for weeks. He reaches one blistered finger out, touching the tip of it to the tears on her cheek. And then he’s back at the wall, no longer with her.

Soon, she thinks. She will see him restored. They will be whole again.

The day they head back she doesn’t bother packing up anything- just throws a few mementos into the duffel she brought and makes sure that she’s dosed him with enough medication to keep him sedated for the trip home. He took the drugs with the usual lack of resistance, drinking deep of the chocolate milk she’d mixed him and giving her an absent glance before going back to his etchings.

   When he began to sag into unconsciousness she looped his arm over one shoulder and loaded him into the co-pilot’s seat on the plane, tucked a pillow beneath his head as he drooped against the window. He’d sleep for the entirety of the flight and she could think again, watch the clouds pass beneath them and imagine what would happen to the cabin they’d left behind. She never wanted to go back there, had left everything a person could need in case some traveler stumbled upon it and made it their home.

   What they would think of the alien writing, she couldn’t guess. But she no longer cared to know what it all meant, and as Coulson began to snore softly beside her she smiled for the first time in as long as she could remember. And her face hurt- but the ache was new, and it was worth it.

She lands the plane at the playground and everyone is there to meet them. It’s so much like coming home that she can barely stand it.

Skye cries when she sees her, throwing her arms around the older woman. The physical contact feels so foreign. She’s forgotten what it means to be touched.

"Don’t ever do that again." Skye whispers. May won't. Can't. Will never have the need. Either this works or it all ends.

Phil is still out, thankfully, and Trip helps her carry him out of the plane. She doesn’t want him to wake up in the hanger, suddenly surrounded by people.

Simmons gasps when she sees him.

"You didn’t tell me it had gotten this bad." She admonishes, already taking his vitals as they move.

Of course it was bad, May thinks. It’s Phil.

It takes a few months for him to be back to normal again- weight, mentality, and so forth, and May is there the entire time to help him get through it. At one point he looks at her over warm milk and muffins late at night, after finishing a particularly difficult bout of physical therapy (as insisted on by Simmons), and his smile is brighter than she’s seen in a while.

   He wants to thank her, but she won’t let him. Can’t imagine being anywhere but there with him beside her, and finds herself overwhelmed with gratitude. She hadn’t felt gratitude in even longer than she’d felt relief, and reaches out to rest her hand on top of his for just a second in reply to what she won’t let him say out loud.

    S.H.I.E.L.D managed without them, but there are still pieces to repair after their absence. They’re more partners now than they’ve ever been, and May takes on the administrative side as much as she can stand to. She still won’t accept him going back out into the field even when he says he’s ready, and he gives in only because he knows how much she did and how much she needs to stretch by taking on field missions again.

She’s missed it more than she’ll ever admit.


End file.
